Okay, the fact that job sites are largely ineffective isn’t really news. But the head-scratcher here was that these things have been around for 10 years.

10 years!

Doing exactly the same thing–by and large–that newspapers have been doing for decades and decades. Today’s job hunting sites have been trading dead trees for pixels, but not really improving the process.

6 Responses to Job hunting sucks

Having worked for a company that made recruiting & hiring software, it’s true that the traditional job boards are way behind on innovation and don’t work very well for anybody. Companies with strong HR depts are investing in their own extensive corporate job site (linked to internal recruiting/hiring tools) to avoid paying job boards to do what they can do more effectively and provide more benefit (strengthen their brand, create relationships with candidates, etc). The recruiters I know inside companies need candidates to apply via their corp. Website so any way to faciliate that is the way to go.

Social networking sites like Linked In are great and leverage technology in a cool way to make what people already do easier – recruiters get better candidates, and candidates make more valuable connections to find jobs that are often not even posted. This is the future for job hunting – it’s making the “it’s who you know” mantra more accessible for more people.

The killer app for a job hunter is some kind of online ‘bot that scours the Web for company job sites (based on your geography, interests, etc.), automatically enters your job search criteria into their search engine, and sends you back any results that match.

Why do Classifieds exist at all? Because we don’t know how to cultivate warm leads on talent.

The notion that leaves me gaping is really not just how stale job search technology is, but that classified ads, search boards, and social networking sites are so necessary because hiring organizations aren’t prepared when the need arises.

Key positions should have at least two heir apparents, and a few external warm leads should the need arise. Key positions shouldn’t be filled with cold applicants.

Also, instead of paying out 30+% to headhunters, start spiffing your internal team to bring talent to the table. You’ll likely get a better cultural fit, and a someone is required to vouch for them before the work begins.

[Editor: I believe you meant “Key positions shouldn’t be filled with cold applicants” so I made that change. ]

Wait a second.

Are you implying that organizations should actually be growing employees symbiotically? That people should be trained and matured to advance within the organization based on their intellect? That the best candidate may already work for the organization? Or, at the very least, may be a contact within arm’s length?

Heresy.

Clearly, the only way to recruit true talent is to wax Quixotic with strange titles and cutesy job descriptions aimed at the masses.

I mean, that’s how the industry has always done it. How could that be wrong?

What you’re getting at (not surprisingly) is making recruiting — and general employee and organizational development — a strategic function, rather than a tactical one (putting butts in chairs). …unfortunately strategic HR is rare given corporate lack of interest in investing too much in an “overhead” department like HR. When I became an HR manager in the tech boom 90’s my uncle (a 30+ yr vet at Tek) was worried – HR was, he told me, “the last to hire, and first to fire.” 10 years later this is still too often true.

And in the post-2009 economy, you can be passed over for less-qualified part-time employees, younger employees (I’m in my late 40’s), and employers who will only hire those meeting their preferred skills (why not just make them mandatory and be done with it?).